Walter Cronkite took courageous, contested stands right through his career, but his last stand was the one so controversial it is pointedly ignored in the elegies that greet the news of his death today. Cronkite was against the Iraq War. Sadly, his legendary stature was inadequate to weigh in the balance against the headlong rush to war.

There is an even more disturbing aspect to the Dresden court killing of the young Egyptian woman, Marwa El-Sherbini, who was in court to testify against the German man who had harrassed her on a playground and called her a terrorist and a slut. The man, "Axel W.", attacked her in court, stabbing her to death 18 times, and stabbed her husband, who came to her defense, several times. Then the husband was shot in the leg by the police, who assumed that he was the attacker. The Egyptian genetic engineering scientist, 34, is now in hospital in critical condition, unable to travel to Egypt to bury his wife.

And that is the disturbing aspect that is fueling so much anger in the Arab and Muslim world. One German's act of fanatical race killing can perhaps be explained as just one man's problem, not an issue with broader societal implications. But the fact that the police not only didn't intervene in time to save the woman, and then assumed that the husband was the attacker and shot him, rather than the bloody knife-wielding German, is more disturbing.

Moreover, the perception that there was little coverage, let alone ourtrage, in the German media- and none to mention in Europe or the US- is exacerbating the outrage in Egypt and beyond in the Middle East. It's very sad.

This morning, a news item on BBC radio set me to thinking that it's time to stop demonizing the Islamic headscarf. An Egyptian woman was stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom by a German against whom she was testifying for insulting her as a "terrorist" earlier, apparently because she was wearing a headscarf. Her husband, an Egyptian academic, was critically stabbed in his attempt to defend her, and shot in the leg by mistake by a German policeman trying to subdue the attacker. The couple's three-year-old son was in the courtroom and witnessed the murder of his mother. She was thirty years old, and three months pregnant with a second child. The German man had come up to her in the playground earlier and called her a "terrorist" for wearing the hijab. She reported him, and he was given a stiff fine, around a thousand dollars. He appealed, and in the court of appeals in Dresden, he attacked the woman and stabbed her to death, and her husband critically, before he was subdued.
Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League, made an emotional statement about the failure of the efforts to overcome the clash of civilizations. In the BBC interview, he was challenged to defend his statement.
For those of us- and I confess I am one- who are ambivalent about the wearing of the hijab by Muslim women, particularly in Western countries, this incident is something of a wake-up call. We need to stop demonizing the hijab. Seriously. We need to stop saying Muslim women in hijab will be unwelcome in France, as Sarkozy has. We need to disassociate what a woman choosed to wear on her head from terrorism. It's time. Before there are more murders in European courtrooms. Before the Arab League's Secretary General's emotional overstatement becomes a fact.

This July 4th, I'm thankful I can wear my Ralph Lauren flag-print aerobics top for the first time since the Iraq war turned it into an (unwitting!) symbol of militarism. This July 4th, I'm more than ever thankful for my liberal hometown's patriotic parade, and living close enough to ride a bike downtown to watch it. I'm thankful for the costume contest, the pie-eating contest, the local bands, and the firework display over the university stadium at night. This July 4th, I'm taking it all in.